Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/818

Rh cussion for another week, and at the close of a thirty hours' session, at eight o'clock in the morning of the 27th of July, the compromise bill was passed by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-two, and sent to the house, which almost at once voted to lay it on the table, upon the ground that it did not settle, but would only protract, the vexed question to which it owed its birth.

But while senators were thus evading the final issue which all felt must soon be met, the lower house had not been free from agitation on the same subject. On the 9th of February Smith of Indiana reported a bill to establish a territorial government in Oregon. This bill as introduced, by comparison with the Douglas bill of 1846, appears to be nearly identical. It was made the special order of the house for the 28th of March. Several debates were had, but little affecting the passage of the bill up to the time of Meek's arrival in Washington, and the president's message to congress on the subject of furnishing a government to that territory at the earliest practicable moment. Fear of the delay which the inevitable discussion of slavery was likely to involve led to the proposition to refer the message to the committee on military affairs, in order that troops might at once be sent to Oregon; but this motion was not allowed, and the bill took its course through the arguments for and against slavery in the territories, as the senate bill had done. The only amendments agreed to were a proviso in the first section confirming to each of the missions in Oregon six hundred and forty acres of land, the introduction of several new sections offered as amendments by the committee on commerce, concerning the establishment of a collection district, ports of entry and delivery, extending the revenue laws of the United States over Oregon, and appropriating